Isobel's between times

Front matter

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

ISGBEL’S BETWEEN TIMES

BY MRS. NATHANIEL CONKLIN.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. ISOBEL 7

II. OYER THE SEA 33

I. Isobel

“ I do not see what I was made as I am, for,” exclaimed the girl at the window, in one of her tones of despairing patience.

She had a great many tones of despairing patience.

“In my opinion you are very prettily made,” complimented the placid and sincere old lady with the yards of white work at one of the other windows.

The afternoon sun streamed in at the four long windows. Madame’s windows were the sunniest that looked out upon the square. The bare floor was illuminated : even the stone steps of the narrow passage caught the glow through the open doorway ; the girl’s hair shone like gold. In her white dress, with the knot of narrow rose-color at her throat and the faint rose-color in her cheeks, to the

ISOBEVS BETWEEN TIMES.

eyes that were watching her, she was indeed “ prettily made.” To herself, with her gray eyes, dark lashes, and darker eyebrows, she was not pretty at all. When she nttered her complaint her physical self was least in her thoughts ; she was wondering why her disposition,* her inclinations, her impulses, why her very best and her very worst self should be such as it was, so unfitted to her circumstances. “I do not see what I was made at all for — then,” she burst out, her despair breaking into open rebellion.

“ Now you are wicked !” rebuked the placid voice, with about the degree of sternness with which she would have reproached her pet canary.

“ You tell me that fifty times a day,” with a shrug of careless impatience.

“Because it is true fifty times a day! You are the most ungrateful girl I ever knew; you grow worse every day.”

“ Because things grow worse every day — things outside of me and inside of me. Tell me,” turning with sharp demand, “ what one thing have I ever had that other girls have ?”

The rebukeful, caressing voice was silent. Isobel usually extinguished her; she usually extinguished every one who opposed her. “ I cannot answer

ISOBEL.

her,” Madame had bewailed to her mother; “ it seems so reasonable when she talks.”

Madame chirped to her canary, then bent her pretty lace head over her embroidery again. Isobel turned to the window, leaning back against the folded inside blinds.

The conversation was usually in snatches. Another of Isobel’s grievances was that Madame grew stupid by the day.

Isobel Kellinger was “prettily made;” that had been an acknowledged fact a great many years, if any fact at twenty, can have been known a great many years. The knowledge of it and the truth of it had made no difference to her all her life. She supposed it never would make a difference ; ifc had never made her mother love her, or brought her father to school as often as once a year. It was two years now since she had seen him, and in all that time he had written exactly three letters; the latest, in her pocket, being the longest, and that was three pages. It is true her own letters did not encourage frequent or long replies ; how could she write freely to some one she did not know ?

No ; being pretty, and quick at her lessons, had made no difference to her father and mother ; they had not cared for her gold medal and two silver

ISOBEDS BETWEEN TIMES .

ones ; nothing in her had made a difference to them ; how could she but lament the way she was made ?

44 There are fathers enough like him” she had overheard Madame Mowbray say to Mademoiselle Abadie, 44 but she's unnatural.”

For seventeen years Isobel Kellinger had been left to herself at a small boarding-school in the suburbs of Havre; her father had had a good report of the management of the girls from another American sea-captain, who had three daughters in the school; and her mother had brought her, a silent, pale child, before she had learned to speak her mother tongue. Her father had made but one stipulation : 44 Teach her everything you teach the other girls, only she must know English. She is a Yankee girl, and I wont have her Frenchified; put her in charge of an English woman ; the day she doesn’t speak better English than French I shall take her away.”

The vacations were spent in Havre with Madame Mowbray, an elderly English widow, whose husband Captain Kellinger had known. There were no children at Madam e’s. The vacations were the dolefulest parts of the doleful year.

The child knew her school life was unsatisfying

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because of the continual something in herself that demanded something better.

“It is very queer,” Madame had observed to Mademoiselle, “but with all his inattention, he seems to own the child more than she does. She always hesitates when I propose any new thing, and says, 4 1 must ask her father.’ I can hardly believe she is the poor little forlorn thing’s mother. But she is named Isobel, after her. ??

The window at which Isobel stood overlooked the great, paved square; opposite was the garden where the people were thronging, and the band playing martial music. Madame supposed she had stationed herself there because of the people and the music, as she had been accustomed to do during all her childish and .girlish days; in reality she was standing because it was less disagreeable than sitting; she liked the square because it was broader than the narrow streets at each side of it; she liked almost all the few things that she did like, because they were less disagreeable than some other things : Madame was less disagreeable than Mademoiselle, France less disagreeable than America, her father less disagreeable than Mademoiselle’s father, who took snuff and made queer little bows to the pupils.

ISOBEVS BETWEEN TIMES.

There was no degree of comparison in regard to the one being she loved with all the fervor and enthusiasm of her solitary, shut-up heart — she did not love or admire her beautiful gay mother — she simply worshipped her. Her absorbing grief was that this love was not returned; mamma kissed her when she came, brought her own pretty dresses to be made over for her, wrote long descriptive letters from every port, beginning, “My darling child,” and ending, “Your loving mamma,” but there it ended. “Mamma loved Lucy, but Lucy died;” how often this sad refrain rang in Isobel’s ears since she had spoken the words to Perez Dekker. She had never put the agony of it into words before. “ I think she would rather I had died and Lucy had lived. I asked her one day, and she kissed me and pushed me away from her. Lucy was seven when she died and I was fourteen. I was happy at school after she brought my little sister. Lucy was born in Madras, and mamma brought her to Madame; and when she was three years old she came to school and stayed with me. I taught her to speak English. Papa said I was never to speak French to her. All I wanted was my little sister and the old garden. But Lucy died after three days of illness, while mamma

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was in Peru; and all I had to show her when she came back was Lucy’s lovely photograph and her grave. I thought mamma would die. And papa wept and covered his face and was very kind to me that day, and called me his only little daughter. Now Mademoiselle has sold the garden for building lots, and it is not country any longer. That is the way it has been with everything. My dove* died, and my parrot; the girl at school that I liked best had an English home and had to go to it; she always said she would write to me to come, but she never has; she writes, but she does not write of my coming. And now they are coming next year to decide what is to be done with me, because I am through school. I cannot do anything with myself, they must do something with me. Mademoiselle wishes me to stay and become the English governess, but papa was not pleased when I asked him. I shall die if I have to go to your strange country among your strange people.”

She was repeating her words now to herself, and looking up into the strange eyes that had grown sympathetic as he listened. All he said to comfort her was: “ Your grandfather is anxious to see you; he will be very kind to you. He has pink cheeks and white hair, and is as handsome as a picture.”

ISO BEE S BETWEEN TIM£s.

“ But she shrank from such comfort; her grandfather to her was her father intensified. Perez Dekker — what an odd name it was — had answered her rapid, eager gestures with such coolness and seeming reservation that she had become chilled, and had broken off with an exclamation of hopelessness; and he had looked at her and said nothing. Since that day last summer America had seemed more dreadful than ever.

He had come once again to say good-bye. His business was finished and he would sail for America the next day. Had she any message to send ?

“ Yes,” she exclaimed, passionately, flushing with many emotions, tell them they have never written to me or sent any word to me before, and I hate them all for leaving a lonely little girl to herself for so many years, and I will never go to them unless my father compels me. I think I would rather sink into the bottom of the sea.”

44 I will deliver it word for word,” he said, seriously, “but I am not one of 4 them. ’ I live opposite, and I never heard of you until the night before I came away, and then your grandfather sent for me.”

44 1 am not glad you came. You have not told me anything, or done me any good.”

ISOBEL.

“You shall not say that when I come here again.”

She made no reply ; she did not care for him to come again. He was one of the strangers of that strange land. Had he been of her own kin he would have been a stranger still.

A crash of music, and then a pause ; Isobel was not aware of either.

“ I wonder what they would have done with Lucy ?”

The utterance startled her; she did not know that she had spoken.

“ I wish you were like other girls. Most girls love to look forward. I always did.”

“I do not wish to become like other girls; I have never seen my ideal girl.”

“ You have that to look forward to.”

“I do not believe that she exists — outside of a book.”

She can exist in you,” said Madame, with more comprehension of her mood than usual.

Isobel laughed and gave her shoulders a careless shrug; Perez Dekker, among other things, had told her relatives that the French-American girl was all gestures and exclamations.

u Looking forward was my delight when I was

I SO BEL'S BETWEEN TIMES .

a girl,” remarked the placid voice; but Madame’s eyes were slightly disturbed.

44 To what ? A cat and a canary, and darning stockings and making lace ? ”

“I have had some other things in between; my between times have been very nice,” half sighed Madame, with a gentle, reminiscent smile.

44 1 never have between times,” cried Isobel, with all the bitterness of her twenty years of neglect.

H$r fingers were pressing that letter in her pocket; her father had written to her from New York, that he expected to sail for Liverpool. Her mother would come for her, and they would all together talk over the plans for her future. He could no longer afford even the few francs Madame asked weekly for her board; he had taken good care of her twenty years ; many girls, at her age, especially American girls, supported themselves. He believed that she was a true Yankee girl, in spite of her foreign training ; she ought to be, with her long line of American ancestry.

Madame had hinted that she was visionary and dissatisfied; a little hard practical life would cure her of that. His present plan was to send her to her grandfather, her mother’s father; Perez Dekker had brought the report that she “hated” her

ISOBEL.

relations : it was fully time that she was cured of such nonsense. Her mother had a revelation to make — now that she was old enough to hear it — and she must be prepared to take it without hysterics or any such nonsense. And then he was her affectionate father, John S. Kellinger.

The horror of that “ revelation ” was with her day and night. Last night she had dreamed that it was that she was to be a fish- woman, and she had wakened to laugh and then to have the dread return in full force — for it must be something worse.

If her mother had only written it and not left it unspoken for her to be burdened by it — the dread of it might be worse than the thing itself. When the dread became overpowering, she fell on her knees and repeated “Notre Pere.”

“ Our Father ” was the only prayer she had ever prayed : it was a charm to ward off evil more than a prayer. What had any of the petitions to do with the “ revelation ” ? “ Give us this day our

daily bread ” — did that touch it ?

“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven:” had that anything to do with it?

“For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory;” surely her trouble was not in his kingdom, or his power, or his glory.

ISO BEL'S BETWEEN TIMES.

But it was all the prayer she had ever learned, and it was more familiar in French than English, because the girls always repeated it with bowed heads at the opening of every morning session.

She had not dared read the letter to Madame ; it would be putting the dreadful thing into words; it would be more real and near if they should speak of it together.

It could not be worse than when Lucy died in her arms alone, and that had not killed her; she wished it had — she wanted to go with Lucy, and then she would not have to go through this —alone. She always had to go through everything alone.

She would have to go to America alone. There was no one there she knew excepting Mr. Dekker, and she had seen him but twice, and did not care to see him again. He was slow and silent, and had such stern black eyes, and such heavy black eyebrows that they hid his eyes— all but the sharp light of them : so much black hair, too, piled up on his head and hanging down behind his ears. If American professors were all like that — but Longfellow was not.

Her two enthusiasms were her mother, — her

ISOBEL.

beautiful, bright, handsomely dressed mother, and the American poet, Longfellow.

The one thing that drew her to Perez Dekker was that he had once seen Longfellow in a book store in Boston.

Had he spoken to him ? Or touched him ?

No, nor had he heard him speak.

The band was playing again. A great wave of home-sickness rolled over her; she staggered backward and held out her hand blindly; she was home-sick for the home she had never had. This home was also an “ideal.”

The girls were full of enthusiasm about their homes. The three American girls were wild to go home when their father came for them, and Harriet Menzies had written once from London, to say that home was dearer and sweeter than she had ever dreamed.

Last year her nearest approach to being at home was a week on board the ship at Hamburg, and the year before she had travelled with her mother in Germany and Switzerland.

She had forgotten these two times when she said that she never had “ between times.”

“0, mamma,” she had pleaded with tears, “if I

I SO BE VS BETWEEN TIMES.

might only go with you sailing everywhere, and having gay times with you.”

The same hurried response she had heard before: “You know that is impossible.”

But she could never understand how it was “impossible.”

How could her father be too poor when her mother had so many handsome dresses, and diamonds on her fingers and in her ears ?

She had told her mother that she was as beautiful as Madame Recamier and as fascinating as Madame de Stael.

“ I shall always have one admirer, even when I am old,” was the pleased and laughing reply.

“The girls said you must be my stepmother; that you were too young to be my mother,” said Isobel proudly, and I told them you were my own mother.”

“You do not look like me, Bel.”

“ I would scorn to spoil you by being a poor imitation. Am I all like papa ? ”

“No, you are not at all like papa.”

Isobel brought herself back from the shadow of the blindness and attempted to listen to the music ; she had heard her mother play the air on the old piano at school. The home-sickness swept over her again. It was almost worse than the dreaded revelation.

“ Bel, how can you stand there and be so idle ?”

“ Is thinking idleness ?” she retorted, saucily.

“ The worst kind, if the thoughts are folly,” said Madame, wisely.

“My thoughts are always folly — they never come to any good,” muttered Isobel.

Oftentimes her attitude was listlessness itself, but it was not that she was idle or afraid of hard work or hard study.

Mademoiselle had spoken to her father about retaining her as a teacher : “In all my teaching I never had a young lady so original,” she said.

Bel smiled at the remark, and the expressive gesture that accompanied it; she said to herself that Mademoiselle had not the least idea what “original” signified.

“You have made her English, not American,” was the growling response. “ I shall have to send her to America for that.”

What else could Monsieur expect with English and French teachers, and with Madame, who had been English three hundred years ?

“I have as good as I expected, Mademoiselle; the girl will pass; you have not wasted my money.”

ISOBEL'S BETWEEN TIMES.

“ The girl will pass !” It was the single word of commendation she had ever heard from her father’s lips.

When a child, one day, she had dropped her head in Madame’s lap with one of her outbursts of tears, u O Madame, praise me.”

“ Praise is bad for little girls,” reproved Madame.

“I like bad things, then, she murmured, gathering her forlorn little self together.

She must be “ spoiled,” because they all said so ; but too much praise, or too much tenderness had not done it. Perhaps she had done it herself by having her own way whenever she could — sometimes even by faleshood or deceit. Her gray eyes looked so clear and true, as true as if no lie had ever shadowed them. But she was not true, she deceived every one who had a right to control her; she had deceived about lessons and walks and books ; how beside could she have her own way ?

“Bel, is Mr. Dekker the only American face you know ?”

“ Papa and mamma.”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

And that small exquisite oil painting — that lovely face on ivory ! She had stolen it — she had stolen it with an overflowing heart, not caring

ISOBEL.

for the consequences. One day, while on shipboard for a week in Havre, in looking through her father’s desk, in a tiny drawer, she had discovered this treasure : the face of a girl about her own age, with large gray eyes, and the sweetest mouth, and sunniest hair. Coming in suddenly her mother had snatched it from her, and angrily asked what she was meddling for ?

“ Tell me who it is! Just tell me who it is,” she pleaded eagerly, pressing it to her lips.

“ No one you ever heard of.”

“ Does she belong to papa ?”

u She does not belong to any one — she is dead,” said Mrs. Kellinger, ungraciously.

“ Did you know her?”

“ She was my cousin; she has been dead years.”

“ What was her name ? ”

“ Her name was Hope Devoe,” replied Mrs. Kellinger, dropping it in Isobel’s lap.

“ Why does papa have her ? Why do not you ?”

“ I did not know your father had it.”

“ If he would only give it to me. I do not dare ask him ; will you ask him, mamma ?”

“ No. Put it away — shut that drawer. I do not believe that he remembers that he has it.”

“ Did she do some dreadful thing that you have

ISOBEL S BETWEEN TIMES .

to hide it ?” She was still pressing it fondly between her palms. As she spoke she lifted it and laid the face close to her cheek. She had found her ideal girl at last. Why was it that the face was not strange ? Had she ever seen her in a crowd ? Had she dreamed of her ?

“How tiresome you are, to-day! You are always raving about something. It is very schoolgirlish to fall in love with a picture.”

“I am in love with it,” Isobel returned. “ Mamma, she is as pretty as you are.”

“ Put it in the drawer. I want to see you put it in the drawer.”

“You do not care for it — you hate it, and papa has forgotten it ; it does not belong to anybody.”

“ It will some day — when I die. Why do you not drop it, as I tell you ? ”

“ I cannot,” touching it again with her lips. “ I want it. May I have it ? May I ask papa ? ”

“Yes, if you choose to make him angry.”

“You know I will not choose that,” Isobel answered, sorrowfully.

The painting was laid away in the drawer, but that evening, while her father and mother were calling upon a friend, the desk was opened,

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the secret drawer pulled out, and the lovely face again pressed to Isobel’s lips and cheek.

This time she could not let it go. She slipped it into her pocket, and there it stayed. More than one night she had fallen asleep with it pressed between her cheek and the pillow.

“I want some one like her,” she said often. a 0 Hope Devoe, what made you die ? ”

That happened three years ago. The theft had not been discovered. How could it be, when her father did not care for it, and her mother hated it?

“ Is Devoe an English name ? ” questioned Isobel.

“ De Voe ! I never heard it.”

But Madame had heard so few things that her questioner was not surprised.

The band had ceased. The people were thronging the streets. Still she lingered at the window. While she was waiting she might as well be standing at that window as doing any other thing.

The days had been endless since that letter came.

“ Bel, what are you doing ? ” came sharply from the lips that just then were closed over a bit of worsted.

“ Looking,” said undisturbed Bel.

I SO BE US BETWEEN TIMES.

“ I shouldn’t think you could see anything new out of that window, if you should stand there a hundred years.”

At that moment she was seeing something new.

A short gentleman, with a sea-browned and sunburned face, a foreigner evidently, not an Englishman. He must be an American, and more than probably a sea-captain. He had her father's tread, his broad shoulders, his slim waist that did not seem to belong to the shoulders. The breath of the ocean was about him. He was accompanied by two oddly dressed girls ; the younger was holding his hand, the elder with her observant manner, seemed to be gathering material for her note book. They must be her father’s countrymen, the kind of people she would jog against in New York.

They went on talking eagerly and gazing around until they had left the square and turned into the narrow street at the right. The gentleman stopped before the church door and pointed down toward the wharves; the girls listened and looked. He took a bundle from the elder girl and walked on, leaving them standing together before the church.

After a moment they entered the church to-

ISOBEL.

gether. She felt inclined to follow them to listen to their remarks. The older girl was about her own age, and the younger was as old as Lucy would have been by this time. How strange to think of herself and Lucy sauntering around with their father !

What would their American eyes think of the ancient buildings — America was so new — of the burning candles, the figures kneeling on the pavement, the bowed heads in the confessional boxes ?

Would America be as strange to her as this land must be to these two girls? In America would she meet soldiers and Custom House officers in the •street ? If she should walk out in New York and stray out into the country, as she had yesterday in the dusk with Madame, would she come to low cottages thatched with straw; through the open doors would she see the fathers and mothers eating their evening meal of fruit and bread, or sitting at the doors talking and smoking as they watched the children at play, dark-eyed little children with caps or black nets upon their heads ?

There must be green trees and clover fields outside of New York. Would she find anything like the blue Seine, covered with sloops, and the hills of Normandy opposite, in the mist? Was the

ISO BEL'S BETWEEN TIMES.

Hudson like it — and what was opposite, like her hills?

Madame’s English friends sang Gentle Annie and Old Dog Troy ; even if these songs were English, she might hear them in America. Those girls could tell her about America: perhaps they knew a girl named Devoe; perhaps they knew Perez Dekker, or her grandfather.

“ Bel !” with an impatient intonation.

Bel’s frown was equally impatient ; it was her only reply.

The room, the sunshine, the artificial flowers, the old lady’s head, her tones and rebukes were all like home to her ; but what was “ home” like? Would those girls be happy in these rooms? Would they be patient and still, and take what came next ? Would they want to know what to-morrow held for them ? Would they be brave, if they had to hear some dreadful thing?

How would they feel if they had the loveliest dream of a mother, and were always awaking to find her neither real nor near ?

What report had Perez Dekker taken of her ? How could they be “ kind ’’ to her when they find out all she was ? Would she ever have to deceive her grandfather ?

ISOBEL.

Perez Dekter had written a description of her to his sister ; but it was years before Isobel’s eyes fell upon it; Jue Dekker had read it to her old grandfather.

“She is a plump little creature, perhaps more human than some people may care to manage ; eyes gray and round, like some children’s you have seen; they lift themselves to you and do not fall until something fills them too full. Eye-lashes and eyebrows wonderfully dark in contrast to the mass of hair that is not gold, or brown, or red ; her cheeks have no color until she speaks, and then it " comes faintly and then brightly; her words tumble over each other as if impatient of the restraint of utterance. So much for what your ladies care to know ; as for the rest, she’s a poor throbbing little soul in bondage, doing her worst while she longs to do her best; as bitter as a girl can be, suffering under some wrong that she dimly comprehends; angry with all the world for keeping her out of her inheritance.

“ Her tones, her resistances, her hands outstretched in pleading, or in self-defence, her defiances, and her little conciliatory ways, all speak in the same strain : “ There is something for me somewhere, and nobody gives it to me.”

ISO BEES BETWEEN TIMES.

The girl would not have understood this any more than she understood herself; she only knew that she was wretched, and nobody cared, that something hard was coming to her, and there was no one to make it easier. Mademoiselle had spoken of the dear Lord once when her little sister died, but where was he ?

“ Bel, your blue muslin needs to be darned.”